Conservation policy

DEFINITION: Laws and regulations designed to limit the economic exploitation of natural resources in the public interest

Trends in conservation policy in the United States have varied in emphasis between allowing for limited exploitation of resources and prohibiting most economic uses of particular resources so that they can be preserved in an undeveloped state. Both approaches, however, have led to the protection and preservation of public lands and animal habitats.

The first use of the term “conservation” in relation to the natural was claimed by Progressive intellectuals in the early twentieth century. In his autobiography Breaking New Ground (1947), Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the US Forest Service and a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt, recalled realizing that all the natural resource problems are really one problem: the use of the earth for the permanent good of humans. The idea needed a name; presidential adviser Overton Price suggested “conservation,” and the matter was settled.

Milestones in Conservation Policy

Year Event1864 Yosemite Valley is ceded to California to create a park.1872 The Act establishes the world's first .1891 The Forest Reserve Act authorizes the U.S. president to establish .1894 The Yellowstone Game Protection Act closes parks to hunting and commercial fishing.1897 The Forest Management Act mandates that national forests be managed to perpetuate water supplies and wood products.1900 The Lacey Act prohibits interstate shipment of wildlife that has been killed illegally.1902 The Newlands Act establishes a national reclamation policy.1903 The first National Wildlife Refuge is created at Pelican Island, Florida.1905 The U.S. Forest Service is created within the Department of Agriculture to manage national forests.1906 The Antiquities Act authorizes the creation of national monuments by presidential proclamation.1910 The Pickett Act authorizes presidential land withdrawals for any public purpose.1911 The Weeks Act provides for governmental purchase of national forestlands.1913 The is authorized in .1916 The in the Interior Department to manage national parks.1918 The restricts the hunting of migratory birds.1933 The Act is passed.1933 The .1934 The regulates grazing on public lands.1937 The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration (Pittman- Robinson) Act provides federal aid to states for .1946 The U.S. is created.1950 The Federal Aid in Fish Restoration (Dingell-Johnson) Act provides federal aid to states for sport fish management.1956 The creates the in the Interior Department.1956 A proposal to construct Echo Park Dam in is defeated.1960 The Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act clarifies the purposes of national forests.1964 The establishes the National Wilderness Preservation System.1964 The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act provides a trust fund for parkland acquisition.1968 The National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act establishes a national river conservation system.1968 The establishes a national system of recreational trails.1970 The National Environmental Policy Act requires environmental impact statements for federal activities that affect the environment.1970 The is created.1970 amendments establish stricter air-quality standards.1971 The Biosphere Reserve Program recognizes areas of global environmental significance.1972 The Clean Water Act establishes stricter water-quality standards.1972 The United Nations Environmental Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, is attended by 113 nations.1972 Federal amendments provide protection for wetlands.1972 The Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act requires pesticide registration.1972 The Marine Mammal Protection Act imposes a moratorium on hunting or harassing of marine mammals.1973 The of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) prohibits international trade in endangered species.1973 The commits the United States to the preservation of biological diversity.1974 The Safe Drinking Water Act sets federal standards for public water supplies.1976 The Toxic Substances Control Act authorizes the EPA to ban substances that threaten human health or the environment.1976 The Federal Land Policy and Management Act directs the Bureau of Land Management to retain public lands and manage them for multiple uses.1976 The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act directs the EPA to regulate waste production, storage, and transportation.1976 The National Forest Management Act gives statutory protection to national forests and sets standards for management.1977 The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act establishes environmental standards for strip mining.1977 Clean Air Act amendments set high standards for air quality in large national parks and .1980 The Fish and Act provides federal aid for the protection of nongame wildlife.1980 The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act establishes more than 40.5 million hectares (100 million acres) of national parks and in Alaska.1980 The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) establishes the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program.1982 The Nuclear Waste Policy Act establishes a process for siting a permanent nuclear waste repository.1985 The U.S. government establishes the to reduce agricultural surpluses by encouraging farmers to reduce the amounts of land they devote to crops, thereby helping to prevent soil erosion and reduce carbon in the atmosphere.1987 The limits the production and consumption of (CFCs).1988 The Ocean Dumping Act prohibits the dumping of sewage sludge and industrial waste.1990 Clean Air Act amendments strengthen the Clean Air Act.1992 The in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is attended by 179 nations.1997 The on Climate Change encourages global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.2001 The , a federal policy initiative designed to protect national forests from commercial development, is issued.20052008 The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act extends CRP enrollment authority through 2012.2009

Origins of Conservation Policy

The antecedents of modern conservation policies go back centuries. Aboriginal cultures around the world developed taboos governing behavior on the hunt. Venetians established reserves for deer and wild boar in the eighth century. Hunting reserves were common in Europe and Asia, and in colonial America those trees thought best for ships’ masts were preserved for that purpose by decree.

Conservation policy, as the term is now understood, is a product of the nineteenth century, when growth, urbanization, and industrialization created unprecedented opportunities for people to influence the natural world in which they lived, both for good and for ill. By the end of the nineteenth century, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation was connected from coast to coast by telegraph and rail, and economic growth was rapid.

Most natural resource policies of the nineteenth century were designed to facilitate economic development. Best known among these policies was the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave free land to settlers, but similar policies provided free land to railroads and states. Other laws stimulated growth by providing for free use of timber and minerals on public lands.

The economic progress of the nineteenth century came at high cost to the environment, typified by the profligate use of forests and the near extermination of North American buffalo, and some prominent Americans took notice. In 1832 the artist and journalist George Catlin wrote of the probable extinction of the buffalo and Native American, and he advocated a large national park where both might be preserved. Henry David Thoreau echoed Catlin’s concerns in 1858, calling for national preserves. In 1864 George Perkins Marsh published Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, the earliest important text with an ecological perspective.

As economic exploitation diminished the supply of natural resources, public attitudes began to change, and with them governmental policies. Although many laws continued to encourage economic growth, others reflected the growing desire for conservation. In 1864 the US Congress sought to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove by giving them to the state of California for a public park. Eight years later, Congress established the world’s first national park at Yellowstone. In 1884 additional legislation prohibited all hunting and commercial fishing within Yellowstone National Park. In 1891 Congress established what would eventually become the national forest system when it authorized the president to set aside forest reserves on public lands.

Preservation Versus Wise Use

These early conservation policies stressed resource preservation. Parks and forest reserves were simply set aside; none was effectively managed. The lack of management—especially forest management—displeased the advocates of scientific forestry, who also considered themselves conservationists. Early in its history, thus, the American conservation movement was divided, with some conservationists preaching “preservation” and others “wise use.”

These contradictory tendencies were epitomized in the conflict between John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and Gifford Pinchot, principal architect and first chief of the US Forest Service. Muir was the intellectual heir of Thoreau and Catlin. A perceptive scientist and popular author, he devoted his life to the exploration, enjoyment, and preservation of natural ecosystems worldwide. Pinchot had studied scientific forestry at its source in Germany. He was a gifted politician, and his passion was not for preservation but for wise use. Muir believed that people could not improve on nature; his conservation was aesthetic and spiritual. Pinchot was committed to maximizing the human benefits from resource use through science; his conservation was economic and utilitarian. Although friends for a time, Muir and Pinchot eventually parted ways, with Muir becoming an advocate for preservation and national parks and Pinchot an advocate for wise use and national forests.

In the United States the legacy of Pinchot is alive and well in the multiple-use management principles of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and in organizations such as the Society of American Foresters, the International Society of Fish and Wildlife Managers, the National Rifle Association, and the Soil Conservation Society of America. Muir’s emphasis on preservation has been institutionalized in the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service as well as in organizations such as the National Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society.

Progressive Era

Many historians emphasize three eras of American conservation policy corresponding roughly to the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the so-called environmental decade of the 1970s. The Progressive Era, epitomized by the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, was the first golden age of American conservation policy. During this period Congress passed a number of pathbreaking conservation laws. The Lacey Act of 1900 put the power of federal enforcement behind state game laws, criminalizing the interstate transport of wildlife killed or captured in violation of state regulations. Another milestone of wildlife conservation was the ratification of a migratory bird treaty with Canada and passage of a law to enforce the treaty. With the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the federal government asserted national authority to manage wildlife for conservation purposes, authority that was upheld by the US Supreme Court in the case of Missouri v. Holland (1920).

Two critically important governmental agencies were created during this era: the Forest Service and the Park Service. In 1905 advocates of wise use and scientific forestry were rewarded with a Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture. The new agency’s first director was Gifford Pinchot, the nation’s foremost advocate of multiple-use forest management based on scientific principles. Under Pinchot’s leadership the concepts of multiple use and sustained yield were applied in the rapidly growing national forest system. When Theodore Roosevelt became president, the United States had 18.6 million hectares (46 million acres) of national forest. By the end of his term of office, Roosevelt had increased the total size of the national forest system to 78.5 million hectares (194 million acres).

During the Progressive Era, advocates of preservation were often unsuccessful in their opposition to the policies of wise-use conservationists, but in the end they also had a victory. The most painful loss came in Yosemite National Park, where advocates of wise use joined forces with the city of San Francisco to the Hetch Hetchy Valley for a municipal water supply, forever destroying a natural valley some regarded as comparable to Yosemite Valley itself. The public outcry over the damming of Hetch Hetchy contributed to pressure for better park protection, however, and in 1916 preservationists achieved a long-sought goal: creation of the National Park Service to manage the growing system of fourteen national parks, including Yellowstone (1872), Yosemite and Sequoia (1890), Mount Rainier (1899), Crater Lake (1902), Wind Cave (1903), Mesa Verde (1906), Glacier (1910), Rocky Mountain (1915), and Hawaii and Lassen Volcanic (1916).

Two new forms of conservation reserves made their debut during this era: national wildlife refuges and national monuments. Roosevelt regarded wildlife sanctuaries as critical to the survival of game species. In 1903 he acted on his belief, creating the nation’s first national on Pelican Island in Florida. He had no specific legal authority to create a national wildlife refuge, but his usurpation was accepted at the time and later approved in principle. In 1910 the Pickett Act authorized the president to set aside land for any public purpose. National monuments began on a firmer foundation, but here, too, Roosevelt pushed conservation to the limit. The Antiquities Act of 1906 authorized the president to establish national monuments. As the name suggests, the law anticipated relatively small reservations to protect archaeological sites, but the monuments Roosevelt designated included 34,400 hectares (85,000 acres) at Petrified Forest, 120,600 hectares (298,000 acres) at Mount Olympus, and 326,200 hectares (806,000 acres) at the Grand Canyon. All of these later became national parks.

New Deal Era

The New Deal was, for the most part, a response to disaster. The primary disaster was the Great Depression, but the decade of the 1930s also saw the Dust Bowl, a minor climatic change that produced disastrous results on the Great Plains. New Deal conservation policies were responsive to the economic and ecological crises of the era, and they stressed wise use through scientific management rather than preservation. The Tennessee Valley Authority was created in 1933 to stimulate employment and economic growth in Appalachia through scientific management of the area’s natural resources. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 was designed to end overgrazing of western public lands by imposing a system of permits based on principles of scientific management. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Soil Conservation Service were both established during this era, and each contributed to repairing environmental damage. Greater concern for the management rather than the disposal of western public lands was also reflected in the creation in 1946 of the Bureau of Land Management to replace the General Land Office.

Environmental Decade

The so-called environmental decade lasted almost twenty years. It began with the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, persisted through the presidential administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, and ended with the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. The conservation policies of this era were responsive to post-World War II economic growth that seemed to ensure economic prosperity while threatening quality of life. Stewart Udall, U.S. secretary of the interior, warned of a Quiet Crisis (1963), Rachel Carson of a Silent Spring (1962), Barry Commoner of The Closing Circle (1971), and Paul R. Ehrlich of The Population Bomb (1968). Conservation policy matured into environmental policy during this era. Conservation was still about husbanding natural resources, but to the historic concerns of conservation—such as forests, wilderness, and wildlife—were added concerns regarding clean water and clean air, energy supplies, and the problems posed by hazardous and toxic wastes. During this era Congress passed most of the major laws that continue to shape conservation policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Preservation policy was strengthened. In 1964 Congress passed the Wilderness Act and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. The former established the National Wilderness Preservation System, which has grown from more than 3.6 million hectares (9 million acres) to more than 40.5 million hectares (100 million acres). The latter facilitated acquisition of land for parks and open space. Four years later Congress established a national system of trails as well as a national system to protect wild and scenic rivers from certain kinds of development. Both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were given new statutory direction emphasizing planning and preservation, sometimes at the expense of economic development. At the end of the era Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980), making conservation withdrawals of more than 40.5 million hectares of public lands and doubling the size of the national park and wildlife refuge systems nationwide.

Wise-use conservation was also well served as Congress radically increased federal regulation of resource use. President Johnson established a presidential commission on natural beauty and addressed world population and resource scarcity in his 1965 state of the union speech. Environmental management was nationalized through a series of far-reaching statutes addressing air pollution, water pollution, marine resources, noise pollution, biological diversity, toxic chemicals, and hazardous waste. New burdens were placed on government and private citizens. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 required all governmental agencies to study the probable environmental effects of their actions before moving forward. A large number of environmental enforcement programs were reorganized in 1970 into the newly created Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA is an independent agency, but presidents have routinely regarded its director as having cabinet status.

Conservation Policy for a New Millennium

At the policy level, the era following the environmental decade was one of consolidation rather than new initiatives. The Reagan administration was hostile to environmental policy and attempted to tilt public policy toward less environmental regulation. President Reagan was able to prevent the adoption of major new conservation policies, but his administrative efforts—led by Interior Secretary James Watt—to roll back environmental laws were successfully resisted by Congress. A major new air-pollution statute was passed during the presidential administration of George H. W. Bush, but this was exceptional for the era. Bill Clinton’s presidential administration gave greater attention to conservation policy, but in the years following the 1994 elections there was little cooperation between the president and Congress on environmental issues.

Americans have come to expect government to practice conservation and protect environmental quality. Doing so has become increasingly difficult. Beyond the policy gridlock of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the issues themselves became more difficult. The most pressing issues—such as stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, and biological diversity—were beset by scientific uncertainty. Such concerns are also global in scope and thus beyond the ability of any single nation to address independently. The future of conservation policy appears to be in the international arena, where extant institutions lack the authority to govern. Treaties addressing the use of ozone-destroying chlorinated fluorocarbons, the preservation of biological diversity, and the limitation of heat-trapping emissions demonstrate that nations are giving increasing attention to conservation issues, but international achievements remain modest.

Despite decades of government conservation efforts, a 2015 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analysis indicated that the Wilderness Act and other existing US policies have favored scenic vistas, particularly in the West, and endangered mammals and birds at the expense of vulnerable reptiles, amphibians, and trees. Thus, the researchers found a mismatch between what has been protected and the species and geographical areas that most need it in order to preserve biodiversity.

In the late 2010s, the administration of President Donald Trump increasingly turned away from conservation in order to exploit natural resources. Soon after his inauguration in 2017, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the landmark international Paris Agreement on emissions reduction and, that December, shrank the Grand Staircase–Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments, constituting the largest such reduction in land protection to date. The following year, the administration rewrote Interior Department guidance to facilitate public uses such as mining and oil and gas extraction, over and against habitat protection and mitigation of human activity. The future of US conservation policy, both at home and abroad, was thus called into question. However, in 2020, when Joe Biden took office, he overturned most of President Trump's conservation policies. In 2024, the Supreme Court severely constricted the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by overturning the landmark Chevron decision, further damaging the cause of conservation.

Bibliography

Allin, Craig W. The Politics of Wilderness Preservation. 1982. Reprint. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2008.

Chiras, Daniel D., and John P. Reganold. Natural Resource Conservation: Management for a Sustainable Future. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Benjamin Cummings/Pearson, 2010.

Davis, David Howard. American Environmental Politics. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998.

Dowie, Mark. Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009.

Eilperin, Juliet. "Energy and Environment Interior Rescinds Climate, Conservation Policies Because They're 'Inconsistent' with Trump's Energy Goals." The Washington Post, 5 Jan. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/01/05/interior-rescinds-climate-conservation-policies-because-theyre-inconsistent-with-trumps-energy-goals. Accessed 15 July 2024.

Elwood, John P., et al. "Chevron Overturned: Impacts on Environmental, Energy, and Natural Resource Regulation." Arnold & Porter, 15 July 2024. www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/advisories/2024/07/chevron-overturned-impacts-on-environmental. Accessed 15 July 2024.

French, Hilary. Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.

Hayes, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. 1959. Reprint. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

Jenkins, Clinton N., et al. "US Protected Lands Mismatch Biodiversity Priorities." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112, no. 16, 21 Apr. 2015, pp. 5081–86, doi: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418034112. Accessed 15 July 2024.

Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. 4th ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.

Rosenbaum, Walter A. Environmental Politics and Policy. 7th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2008.